


Betrayal

by Valmouth



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Anger, Bat Family, Discovery, M/M, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He says nothing. Not then. Doesn't trust himself to speak. Doesn't know what he'll do in the circumstances because Barbara is old enough to make her choices, Bruce is the Batman, and he isn't supposed to know about either of those two things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I mean no offence by posting this and make no money from it. I admit I own no rights to the original characters, or to the overall universe these characters are derived from.

He doesn’t get to see her in her first six months on the streets and at first, he’s curious. The idea of a female Bat is definitely intriguing. He wonders how different she looks, how differently she moves. He wonders if she does everything the Batman can do, and if she has the same training.

From the reports, she can hold her own.

The Batman still comes to the rooftop – sometimes its Bruce and sometimes its John. It’s easy to tell them apart. They have different suits, different heights, different jawlines and mouths. Different eyes.

They sound different, and Bruce uses fewer words for the same amount of information.

John is learning, though, Gordon gives him that.

The new Robin is interesting too. Gordon’s not sure he would have picked red and green but the boy swings through the air like an acrobat, all clean lines and lithe confidence, and it doesn’t seem to matter if his clothes are bright – he blends into the shadows like he was born in them.

Like Bruce does, and John has learned to do.

Like, apparently, the Batgirl can.

He doesn’t see her in action until they encounter the Riddler, and when the bombs go off around the city, all of Gotham’s vigilantes are spread out, working their way through separate sectors while buildings crumble and civilians scream and semi-automatics chatter.

It’s a riddle, just like everything else, and when they’ve all worked out their riddles they all end up at the central hub of the Gotham First National Bank and Trust.

The Batman materialises out of the shadows and Gordon’s already ready to go, gun drawn and protected by the thin shell of his armoured vest.

He goes in anyway. Bruce is running on fumes; he can see it in his eyes, in the red rims and thinning black paint and the scuffed look of his body armour. In the way he limps, barely discernible except that Gordon knows where to look.

Of course, Bruce half-dead can still do more damage to a villain than most people but Gordon likes to be sure. Can’t stand sitting back and letting someone else fight his battles.

His trusted team is loyal. They back him all the way into hell, just like he backs the Batman, and for a few short minutes, it’s the same as every other major incident they’ve ever had. When they go in guns blazing and souls at the ready. When they go in recklessly on the thought that even if they die, they’re going to leave something good behind.

And then she arrives.

So do Nightwing and Robin, but then he’s seen them before. Is reasonably sure that Nightwing is John because he knows the height, knows the way that John moves, though he’ll take that knowledge to the grave.

When she arrives, she is a whirling flash of movement and quick, sure efficiency.

The vigilantes don’t really need police assistance. They could take the building down on their own. The cops give them more to worry about, more to protect. The cops, in short, hamper them.

But Gordon refuses to keep his people from doing the job they’re supposed to do. This is officially police business and as much as he hates every time he’s stood on yet another doorstep to say ‘I’m sorry’ to yet another parent/ spouse/ sibling/ child, he refuses to let his people sink into the complacency of thinking that danger is for other people.

He remembers the bad old days, when danger was so dangerous that it was better to work for the mob than against them. He remembers the days just after that, when things got worse. And then he remembers the years without the Batman, and his own fear of going into situations alone.

No gadgets, no mysteriously sourced information. And ultimately no back-up with an uncanny ability to do the impossible.

He leads his people in, and he keeps them there, and he likes to think they help. That they hold their own.

The Bats and the Robins and the whoever else they have do what they do best and the Batgirl is curiously familiar.

He doesn’t like to think too hard about it. Doesn’t like to remember that it’s Bruce under that cowl. Or John under the hood. Doesn’t like to remember that Robin is probably a fourteen year old boy who should be safe at home – whose greatest concern should be school and girls, not saving Gotham.

But she is familiar.

The recognition comes to him between one moment and the next, and he is so stunned he freezes. He drops his gun arm. Stops aiming.

He whips it back up again, and his concentration is only broken for a minute, but it’s long enough. One of his people goes down with a bullet in her stomach.

It’s an ugly, messy, agonising way to die and he’s shouting to someone to get her out of there, get her to the medics, and it’s Robin who gets to her on the other side of the room through a hail of bullets and sweeps her up over one shoulder. 

The Batmen is on the gunmen almost immediately, disarming them with deadly precision, mouth set to grim fortitude as he stands between danger and his sidekick. Leaves John to go after the Riddler, shoulder to shoulder with the Batgirl.

And she ... Batgirl has blood on her cheek.

He sees it stripe red over her skin and that’s his baby girl under that mask. That’s Babs. He knows her face, her form. Not this confident, easy violence, no, but her shoulders, her hair, and the way her upper lip curls back with physical effort.

The way it had when he’d helped her move into her new apartment. When they’d lugged furniture around all morning, and she’d teased him about being out of shape and old. Both of them laughing, learning their way around each other after so many years.

He levels his gun, and he aims, and this time he doesn’t care if he has to kill to protect.

When the smoke has cleared, when he has the Riddler in custody and two of his people are dead, all he feels is hollow. He’s killed four men in the shootout and injured two more.

Bruce stiffens when the fight’s over.

Gordon catches the quick shift of eyes between Batgirl and Commissioner and he knows Bruce knows. He knows that look in Bruce’s eyes.

But he says nothing. Not then. Doesn’t trust himself to speak. Doesn’t know what he’ll do in the circumstances because Barbara is old enough to make her choices, Bruce is the Batman, and he isn’t supposed to know about either of those two things.

He has no say in this. Clearly he’s been given no say in this.

The rage and fierce terror roils in his gut and he’s either going to be sick or he’s going to strangle Bruce with his bare hands for daring to take what was so precious in his life and drag it down into the abyss.

Bruce looks at him, and Gordon simply turns his back and walks away.

The cop with the hole in her stomach has been rushed to hospital. There is no word yet on her condition.

“Get them off my crime scene,” he rasps.

And Montoya frowns in confusion as she processes who ‘they’ are and then raises her eyebrows in wild surprise because he’s never sidelined the Batman before, but one look at his face and she doesn’t argue. Does what he tells her to for once because even Montoya knows instinctively when enough is enough.

Even Montoya knows that there are lines. Limits.

He spends what’s left of the night in the incident room at the MCU offices delegating, pushing paper, making calls. The room is never empty, and this time he’s locked the windows. Kept the signal off.

Two hours after his return he wonders vindictively if Bruce will come to the rooftop and wait for as long as he has the patience, and then leave unfulfilled.

He wonders if Bruce will understand a small part of what it was like to spend eight years tied to a signal that was broken, waiting for someone who never came.

He spends his whole night working, and when the dawn breaks, he goes to the 4th precinct under pretext of looking in on one of the Riddler’s lieutenants in holding and he crashes in their bunk room.

Four other cops are also snatching some much needed shut-eye.

He’s forgotten this, too. The feeling of other cops in a room. Of being surrounded by people he doesn’t know with different patterns of breathing and different types of night noises and the different feel of restless, fidgety sleep crammed into a few hours of exhausted peace.

To his everlasting shame, he sleeps like the dead. His body refuses to let him do otherwise. And no one wakes the Commissioner up when it’s time for the changing of the guard.

He’s embarrassed and ashamed of himself but his people are stoically loyal and say he needs his rest, never mind that fair is fair and he’s had more than his share. He’s occupied a sorely needed bed for too long but no one holds it against him. They don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with it at all.

He’s touched and deeply thankful, but it means it can’t be repeated. He goes to precinct stations in rotation. All day.

His phone rings countless times but he doesn’t answer unless he recognises the number.

The fourth time that Montoya calls, he answers with a distracted, “What now?”

“Jim.”

He ends the call. The fact that he’s been manipulated into answering at all doesn’t help Bruce’s case.

He gets a succession of calls from Stephens, John Blake, Anderson and Ludmilla. He doesn’t answer any of them.

The second night, there is still clean-up. He locks his office window, keeps his gun on his desk, and he leaves the signal off. It’s the surest way he knows to get his point across.

And it works. Bruce doesn’t sneak into his office.

His phone rings twice more. Twice more he lets it ring forlornly to a close. On the very last call, he gets a message : “Jim, just...”

He deletes it without listening to it.

His opinion on the matter wasn’t asked for. He sees no reason to discuss it now. And if Bruce does, it’s because Bruce knows he’s crossed the line.

An officer mentions the Batgirl in his hearing and his fists clench by his side in a wave of fear and anger so strong it drowns him for a few seconds.

His daughter. His quiet, demure, smart daughter. Brains over brawn – that was Babs – and now she’s fighting crime in the streets of Gotham. Dressed as a Bat, for God’s sake.

If he closes his eyes he can still see her aged seven, huddled into her mother’s side and shaking in silent terror; Barbara’s hand over their little girl’s eyes in some futile effort to protect her from the horror of Harvey Dent’s half-face, of the gun pointing at her little brother, of her father on the ground, helpless to save them.

“There’s something we’re not getting,” he says, frowning at the map with the bombsites picked out in red pen, “This was too easy.”

“Easy? Sir, I’d hate to think of what you’d consider hard if last night was easy,” Anderson says.

The Joker, he thinks, and Bane. One night, five months – it’s all the same in the end. Eight years of loneliness. The devastation of watching his ex-wife take his children away and knowing, _knowing_ , it was right and proper because he couldn’t protect them.

Not like they deserved.

It’s Stephens who slips away on the third night. Stephens who comes back with pursed lips and an awkward hesitation, who uncharacteristically knocks on Jim’s door before he barrels his way in.

“Evidence,” he says gruffly, and shoves the file at him, meticulously marked and detailed.

Gordon flips through it with the blankest expression he can muster.

“Hey, look, it’s none of my business,” Stephens starts uneasily.

“It’s not,” Gordon interrupts, “Here. You follow the trail.”

And he slaps the file shut and shoves it back across his desk.

Five days he spends on the job, five nights in various places. Three times in different precincts, once in his office, once in a motel down the street. The sixth night, he calls it quits and he goes home.

He isn’t surprised to find a figure sitting in his armchair in the dark.

Bruce looks... distant.

It rips Gordon’s heart to shreds and makes him angrier than he was before and he doesn’t trust himself to speak, though he’s been rehearsing the words for five days.

“It wasn’t about you,” Bruce says finally.

The thin shell of Gordon’s self-control starts to crack.

“She came to me. She figured it out.”

Gordon strips off his tie, walks into the bedroom.

“She knows what she’s doing. She’s good,” Bruce finishes, following him in without a moment’s hesitation.

Good.

Gordon turns around. “Take off your shirt,” he says.

Bruce’s brow furrows.

“Are you deaf? Take off your goddamn shirt!”

“Jim, this isn’t how we...”

“I’m not going to fuck you,” Gordon says bluntly, “Take off the damn shirt.”

Bruce’s arms hang lax and loose by his side. He hesitates a second longer, and then he pulls his shirt off.

Fluid muscle shifts beneath the skin and usually the sight means something more. Means something happier, and sweeter. This time Gordon watches it with detachment. Can’t afford to let himself feel yet because he’s afraid of what he’ll do to Bruce. Afraid of how Bruce will retaliate to protect himself. He’s even more afraid that Bruce will simply submit and take whatever he dishes out. Because Bruce is fully capable of thinking he deserves whatever he gets, and that he’s not allowed to fight back.

Bruce isn’t stupid but Bruce is... complex.

Gordon shifts when Bruce is done.

“Arms down,” he says.

Bruce’s eyes narrow but he drops his arms back to his side.

“Look at yourself,” Gordon says, and doesn’t recognise his own voice. Lifts his own right hand to gesture dismissively, disgustedly, at Bruce’s body.

He’s never approached Bruce with disgust before but now he’s thinking of those scars on his daughter. Thinking of the injuries that Bruce brings into his bed, and thinks of Babs trying to explain those scars.

 _Having_ to explain those scars.

His daughter, and he’s so angry he’s pinned by his own self-control. He can’t move, because he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he does.

Bruce is moving though; hesitantly at first, but each step gains in confidence.

“I’ll keep her as safe as possible,” he says, “I’ll do everything I can.”

Bruce reaches out to him, distance falling away to emotion, eyes soft and vulnerable, so vulnerable, with the illusion of being defenceless, and in the end, that’s what breaks the dam.

Gordon lashes out just once.

Knocks Bruce’s hand away and steps back. Away.

“Like Rachel Dawes,” he says, “Like Dent. Like dragging John into your madness. That fourteen year old _kid_ you’re brainwashing into a weapon. I should have called child services the minute I saw him but I tried to tell myself you could be trusted. Tried to tell myself you know what you’re doing but you don’t. You play God. You pick and choose what you like and when you’ll fight and who’s going to help you. It’s never been about Gotham. It’s about your fucking ego and your fucking anger and what you decide is appropriate. Your rules are just pretend. You don’t have any!”

Bruce’s face has gone completely blank.

Jim knows that’s a bad sign but he can’t stop. Walks forward and says, “Get out,” before walking right past him and heading to the kitchen.

There’s no sound from the outside world as he pulls out the bottle of scotch. No sound of footsteps, no hesitant figure leaning in the doorway, no soft sigh. No argument. No defence.

In the end, he doesn’t even hear the window open as Bruce slips back out into the night.

Babs hasn’t spoken to him in a week. He hasn’t taken her calls but her messages are cheerful. Too cheerful for a masked vigilante who knows the Commissioner of Police has recognised her true identity.

Or does Babs imagine that she is above the law? Does she think that Daddy won’t and can’t bring charges down on her for interfering in police business, for damage to city infrastructure, for illegal access of police resources and private property?

He toys with the idea, promising himself darkly that it will protect her. Force her to give up this world of crime and criminals.

A small voice at the back of his mind reminds him that he has never considered this action for John, or Dick. Knowing who they are and where to find them. Knowing that if he should call, they will come.

He slips into an alcohol-fueled dream of a sting on the top of the MCU building. Of lighting the signal and bringing in the whole lot of them.

He wonders if Babs stood in the shadows on those nights when he talked to John, or Bruce, or hell, to Robin. Wonders if she worried about him finding out or if she was arrogant enough to like the great big secret.

Demure Babs with her quick brains and her wide smile, teasing him about working all hours of the night, lying through her teeth.

And Bruce. Six months of the Batgirl on the street, and how many months of training? How many months of constructing her suit, her mask, her gadgets? How many months of working out the logistics? And Bruce would slip in through his windows, smile and tease, and press gentle kisses down his back, and all the time he’d come from the cave where he’d been training Babs to enter a world Gordon had tried so hard to protect her from.

All this time, he’s been lied to. By both of them.

The bottle is half empty when Gordon wakes up late the next morning, head throbbing, but he drags himself upright and goes to work.

His people stay carefully away from him. They don’t know what’s wrong; they just know something is.

Stephens wants to help. So does Montoya. They think he’s cracking.

He thinks maybe he is.

They take it in turns to wait by the signal and Gordon wants to ask if it’s Bruce who drops by, or John, or Robin, or if Montoya stares at his daughter in a skin-tight armoured suit.

Babs pushes her way into his office two weeks after the debacle. She stands there with her hands on her hips and her pretty face in a tight frown, wisps of red hair slipping loose from her ponytail.

“I’m sorry to bother you at work, Dad,” she says, “I know you’re busy. But you haven’t been answering my calls and I was worried. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he says, “But busy.”

Her shoulders relax. “You could have just sent me an email,” she grumbles, frown turning into fond exasperation.

He looks at her, colourless and calm. “You know how it is,” he says, “Late nights, last minute emergencies. And I’ve got a day job too.”

She doesn’t get it. Just rolls her eyes. “You work too hard,” she says, “Can’t you spare an hour and come out to lunch with your favourite daughter?”

“Sorry, Babs. Not today. I really can’t.”

She accepts it with a shrug.

His chest is so tight it hurts, watching her turn on her heel and walk away. The easy, natural grace of so many years of self-defense classes and innate athleticism seems so different now he knows. Seems so much more intent.

The next person he sees is John.

John has more sense than to climb in through his apartment window uninvited. He crouches on the fire escape and taps at the glass.

Gordon considers ignoring him but doesn’t.

“What do you want?”

“What did you say to him?” John demands, not stripping off the cowl but not bothering to mask his voice.

This, too, is different between Bruce and John. Bruce will never betray the Batman, not even to someone who knows the truth, and knows the face beneath the cowl intimately. Who has held it between his two hands and kissed the even, regular features.

“The truth.”

“Which is?”

Gordon blinks. “Is it any of your business?” he asks mildly.

“Do you know what he’s planning now?” John asks. There’s an edge in his voice, a certain set to his shoulders. “He’s going to retire the Batman.”

Gordon shrugs. “He’s retired before.”

John doesn’t shake his head, or lower his gaze. He stands there, tense and ready and unmovable, and he says, “You don’t get it. He’s not just retiring himself this time. He’s retiring the _Batman_. He’s dismantling the cave, the gadgets. And everything we’ve all fought so hard to build is going to be tossed in the trash with the Bat suit.”

Again, this is not the first time Bruce has killed the Batman. Not even the first time the Batman has vanished without a trace.

“Will that stop you doing what you do?” Gordon asks.

From John’s silence, he doesn’t imagine it will. For any of them.

“This is your chance, John. Get out of the game. Get a life.”

“This is my life,” John says fiercely.

Gordon knows. He just thinks someone should say it.

Halfway through their conversation, Babs comes in. She walks in through the front door, using the key her father once gave her, and gone is the demure librarian and the bubbly daughter. This woman is self-possessed, so calm it’s eerie.

She spares John a glance and says, “I see you got here first. Now go away; my father and I need to talk.”

Her hair is loose. It’s been pulled about by the wind and by the climb up six flights of stairs. She isn’t wearing her glasses, and she doesn’t pretend to play games with him.

John ducks back out the window. “Commissioner,” he says, and there’s an odd note of commiseration in his departure.

Father and daughter are left alone and she studies him with dispassionate calm, so foreign on her face but so coldly familiar that the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The ice prickles down his spine.

“What,” Babs asks, “Did you do?”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You know, don’t you? How did you find out?”

He looks at her. “Do you really think I can’t recognise my own daughter? Even in a mask?”

“The Riddler’s bank job.”

She watches him closely, eyes narrowed. “You’re angry,” she notes, and the words are objective. Not particularly surprised, not even particularly caring.

“Of course I’m angry,” he says, “What the hell are you thinking, doing something like this?”

“I think I’m making a difference. Saving lives and helping people.”

He can’t fault her for the sentiment. “Not,” he says, pleads really, “As a Bat.”

She sighs and shakes her head.

“You don’t know what this is going to mean,” he says, “For you! What you’re going to face.” He thinks of the Joker and his chest tightens. “The kind of danger you’re in.”

“Of course I know. I’m not stupid, Dad. I made my choice with both eyes open, I promise.”

“Then there’s nothing more to be said,” he says, and turns away from her.

“Yes,” she says coolly, “There is. What did you say to him?”

The second time in twenty minutes he’s been asked the same question. And once again, it’s all about Bruce.

He waits while the spiking viciousness subsides before he trusts himself to speak.

“I told him he should have stopped you,” he says bluntly.

“That’s not fair.”

“Really.”

“Yes. And if you need to hear it, he tried. He told me I was too young and didn’t know what I was asking. Then he told me I’d ruin my life. It could get me killed, crippled, arrested, accused, victimised, demonised, and possibly send me insane. And then he refused to train me.”

“Evidently that didn’t work.”

“No,” she agrees, voice steady, “It didn’t. He didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Not after the choices he’s made in his life.”

Barbara is giving him her secret like it’s perfectly reasonable.

As though wearing a costume and a mask is a sensible decision to make at twenty three, when they go hand-in-hand with putting her life in danger from then on.

“Dad, this was my choice. I wanted to do this. I insisted he train me, and I promise you, he would never have let me do this if he didn’t think I could. I’m sorry it makes you angry but you’re going to have to accept it.”

“Babs, you’ve been doing this for six months and so far you’ve had a good run. Things have gone your way. Has he told you about how bad they can go? The things he’s done to keep people safe? Christ, if you were so hung up on saving people, you could have joined the police. God knows we can use recruits.”

“And be Commissioner Gordon’s Daughter all through the Academy? Thanks, Dad, but no thanks. And hard as it is for you to hear, the police will never be able to give me the resources I need to do what it is I want to do.”

“Giving you the resources,” he echoes, “I see. Saving lives has to be on your terms, does it? God help the people of Gotham.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t,” he interrupts, “The police don’t get to pick and choose what we want to investigate. We don’t get to save only the innocents.”

“The police don’t save people. They enforce the law. The law is what saves people in your job.”

“And you don’t like that.”

She doesn’t show him an ounce of guilt or shame when she says, “It wasn’t the law that saved Jimmy’s life that night. Or ours.”

They don’t talk about that night.

“I’m not going to argue with you about the police, Dad. You know that was never going to happen. What I don’t get,” she continues, “Is why the hell you think blowing up at Bruce is going to make me change my mind.”

“Because he lied to me.”

The words are louder than he expects, and more honest than he likes, and he startles himself as much as he surprises her. Takes a deep breath and controls his voice.

“Don’t tell me he couldn’t stop you tagging along, Babs. I’ve seen the suit. I saw you fight. How long have you all been in on this? A year? Longer? Is this why you came to Gotham in the first place? For Christ’s sake, do you know what I’ve done to keep you away from this? And then he pulls you back in! He turns you into- into...”

“Batgirl,” she says sensibly.

“Batgirl,” he echoes, and digs his fingers into his scalp in the vain hope that it will ease the pressure building ominously in his skull.

“And we,” she says, “Were not all in on it. It’s not a secret conspiracy.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Not a conspiracy against you,” she amends, “I’m telling you, the whole thing was my choice. I know you’re angry but I know what I’m doing. I’m fine. I can protect myself.”

“Until the one time that you can’t,” he says brutally.

The words drop like lead shot into her pretty speech. The silence that falls in its wake is empty and deflated.

“You remember,” he starts, “The night we never talk about. The night Harvey Dent almost killed us.”

“I remember.”

“You were so young. And I couldn’t save you. He saved us all but, Babs, he took a bullet to do it. Have you seen what it’s done to him? The scars? His back? His knees? Do you really understand what he’s done to keep us safe? And me, what I’ve given up to...” He blinks, because his voice is cracking and she’s looking at him, half-pity and half-incomprehension in her eyes.

“I know,” she says carefully, “And I’m grateful.”

“I don’t want your gratitude,” he snaps.

She twitches her head impatiently. “Then don’t throw your sacrifices in my face.”

She sighs and rubs her eyes.

“Look, I do appreciate what you mean. I understand. I _know_. But how can you tell me I’m not allowed to do this? You go out every night, risking your life when you don’t have to, and it’s got nothing to do with keeping me safe.”

“It’s my job.”

“Most of what you do is beyond the scale of your job. Why do you think he works with you?”

“Because I’m Commissioner of Police,” he says drily, “He can’t get anyone higher.”

Unexpectedly, her mouth quirks into a small smile. “There is that. But he picked you when you were a captain. Nothing special. I’ve seen the files. He’s either not so good at internal security access or he wanted me to find my own way around the bigger picture. I’m never sure with him.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Look,” she says again, “I understand why you’re angry. I didn’t tell you because I knew how you’d worry, and I wanted to protect you if-if things got dangerous. But you should know it was always my decision. I’m a big girl. No one bullied me into anything.”

She bites her lip.

“But if it’s his part in all this that’s really making you mad, well, I don’t understand that. And maybe you should think about it.”

He watches her, but she’s genuine. She doesn’t know.

Sometimes Gordon wonders if John knows. He’s always assumed that John does, but it might be that he’s wrong. It might be that Bruce is more complex than Gordon gives him credit for, and juggles this secret along with every other in his life.

The thought is unexpectedly tragic.

“He knew I’d never want you involved in something like this. He should have refused, talked you out of it. I can’t believe he couldn’t think of a way to stop you.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to.”

Gordon stays silent.

“Dad, he’s getting older. He’s amazing but it can’t last forever. He needs back up. And yeah, I’ve seen the scars. I’ve also seen him alone, rattling around in that big house, waiting for someone else’s son to come home. Waiting for John to drop by. Or me. Pretending like he has family when really, all the family he’s got is dead.”

“He has a company to run. A whole social calendar.”

“Yeah, but going out means more masks. And work is work.”

She looks around, and then goes into the kitchen.

He freezes for a minute, trying to remember if he’s put the half empty bottle away but then he lets it go. Forces himself to relax. It’s the right day to acknowledge the secrets.

All secrets?

He considers it.

Considers telling her.

He doesn’t.

Wouldn’t know how to broach the topic. And anyway, he’s not sure there’s anything left to tell her about.

The problem is he’s still angry. He still feels betrayed. And he knows that Bruce knew this would happen. The knowledge of Bruce’s cold-blooded calculation in keeping Batgirl away from him for as long as possible makes him wonder when, if ever, Bruce would have told him.

When Babs was more experienced? When Babs was injured? When she was dead?

His blood runs icy at the thought.

He remembers Harvey’s body; remembers the explosion that claimed Rachel Dawes’ life. He remembers Bruce, flying a nuclear bomb out over the bay.

The thought of Babs making that kind of sacrifice – the thought of her _having_ to – makes him want to grab her, fold her up in his arms like he did when she was a toddler. Makes him want to lie and say he’ll protect her no matter what.

He waits two days before he hangs his head and makes his reluctant way to the rooftop. It’s not quite dark yet. There are still streaks of yellow and pink in the sky, far out to where the water lies.

His plan is to smoke, wait for the dark, and then... then just wait. As he always has, no matter how angry, how lonely, how uncertain the future.

So he is somewhat shocked to find the Batman already there.

There is barely any shadow, and Gordon doesn’t want to consider how the Batman has managed it in what must have been broad daylight, but then again it’s Bruce. Bruce with his eerie calm and uncanny abilities.

Bruce who will always find a way.

“You came,” he says. Voice disguised, though it’s so obviously him.

The same voice that Gordon has heard express anger, warning, laughter. Need.

“You should have said no,” Gordon says gruffly, “You should have stopped her.”

The cowl bows. Acceptance of guilt.

“You knew how I’d react.”

“I knew.”

“But you did it anyway. And then you lied to me about it.”

“I never lied,” he says unexpectedly.

“You lied.”

“I didn’t. You never asked me who she was.”

The words are coldly logical.

And Gordon clenches his fists as he snarls, “You should have told me!”

“How could I tell you?” Bruce asks quietly.

Apt words. How could he have? How can Gordon tell his daughter the reason that the worst of his anger is for Bruce, and almost exclusively Bruce?

“Any time,” Gordon says, voice shaking, “Any time in six months. How much longer if Nigma hadn’t blown up half the city? When she was dead?”

“I hoped she’d stop before that.”

“You taught her how to fight. How to take down ten bad guys with her bare fists. And you thought she’d just _stop_?”

“This life isn’t easy. The sacrifices it demands would make anyone reconsider.”

“Except you.”

Hazel eyes, red-rimmed and red-veined, heavy lidded, stare back at him unflinchingly. “I’ve reconsidered more than once.”

“Is that why you’re retiring the Batman? Pulling everyone else off the streets with you?”

This time Bruce looks away. Looks down. “It was never meant to be permanent.”

“And you think that’s going to help now? I’m telling you John won’t stop. And my daughter, for God’s sake – I gave everything to keep her out of it! You knew that, and you’ve given her everything she needs to keep going out there, with or without you.”

“I’m sorry.”

The words are heavy, wrung out of stone.

Gordon knows how much it means to have heard them at all. Bruce does not apologise. Not like this.

“It’s too late,” Gordon sighs.

The cowl dips again in acceptance.

Gordon looks out to where the pink streaks are fading. “Doesn’t mean we can’t move forward,” he says calmly.

Bruce is already halfway across the rooftop. Already halfway into the shadows. Already halfway gone. But he comes to an abrupt halt by the signal and twists around, cape swirling around him. Eyes narrowed in confusion, suspicion. Mouth grim.

“You can’t abandon them now,” Gordon says, “Not after you’ve made them what they are. That’s not what fathers do. What they do is look after their own. Even if they know they can’t save their kids from everything.”

“I’m not her father.”

“You may as well be. You made Batgirl. You probably made Babs what she is, in a way, when you saved her from Dent.”

There’s a brief moment of silence and then, “That’s deeply disturbing.”

Gordon swallows down the urge to laugh. “Even a small, simple gesture of human kindness,” he says, “Can change the world. Like reminding someone his world hasn’t ended. Or saving someone’s life.”

“Jim.”

“Your gesture was simple but not small. Between us, we’ve changed the world. We even changed each other.”

“You haven’t changed.”

“I’m not the man I was ten years ago. Definitely not the man I was forty years ago.”

“Forty years ago I was four,” Bruce replies thoughtfully.

Four.

Three years before the night that changed Bruce’s life.

Two years younger than Babs was the night her own life changed.

If he listens, he thinks he’d probably hear the sweep of cloth against the dusty concrete. He’d probably hear the footfalls, light as they are. But he’s never felt any need to pierce the veil.

He’d appreciated the glamour in those days when he more than anyone else had needed to believe that the Batman was more than just a flesh and blood man. More than just someone who could promise the world but fail to deliver. Had needed to believe that the Batman was superhuman. Invincible. Eternal.

Bruce isn’t eternal. But sometimes, Gordon likes to pretend.

Forty years ago he was twenty one, and Bruce was four, and they were both young and innocent and happy. Sheltered. Forty years since then and he’s sixty one. Bruce is forty four. They have scars, most of which are not merely physical. They’ve buried more people than they ever thought they could, and they’ve experienced more loss and grief than they thought they could bear.

And they’re still relatively sane.

“I’m afraid,” he says softly, “That she’ll run into things I can’t protect her from.”

Bruce is beside him. Not looking at Gotham, looking at him. Focused on nothing but him. The sheer intensity of that gaze is foreplay. Slides under his outer skins and secrets and his past, pries up his hatches and infiltrates his blood. Sears right through skin and sinew and bone to whatever it is that passes for what he truly is.

“I’ll do what I can,” Batman rasps.

Half-asleep, old, injured, Bruce can still do more damage to a criminal than anyone else. And then there is John. And there is Dick.

“It’s not just that,” Gordon says, “I’m afraid of what I’ll do to make up the difference. How far I’ll go to keep her safe, or how easily I’ll break if it’s a choice between her and anything else.”

“Jim,” Bruce says, and reaches out, “If that day comes, you’ll do what’s right.”

“How do you know?”

“You always have.”

“There’s no guarantee.”

Bruce’s hand on his shoulder squeezes, fingers digging into tight muscle. “That's what the Batman's for.”

Later that night, it’s Bruce who comes to his door, unmasked and smile in place. It’s the smile he wears for cameras, barely there and self-mocking. But when Jim smiles back it softens, and widens, and crinkles the corners of Bruce’s eyes.

“You’re not forgiven,” Jim warns.

“Didn’t think I would be. I thought you’d kick me to the kerb. Alfred said you’d have every right.”

The kiss is sweet, and messy, and Gordon wants so much to stand on his injured pride and feelings and dignity, to stand on the side of righteous indignation and refuse to accept the way Bruce smoothes his hands down his back. The way Bruce presses close.

Jim’s the one who gets Bruce out of his shirt, and he pauses for a minute, just to look. Reaches out a hand to touch the fresh tape wound over and across Bruce’s left shoulder.

“Last night?”

Bruce gives an impatient shake of the head. “Nothing important.”

Jim takes his word for it, and tries not to think of how his daughter will lie the same way. Tries not to think of how often she’s sat across from him, with tape binding her ribs, or her shoulders, how many bruises she’s smiled in spite of. Tries not to wonder if the day will come when she takes a bullet or a knife.

He runs his mouth and moustache and lips over the trapezius muscle where it’s still visible beneath the tape, and Bruce wraps an arm around his waist and holds on.

“I can’t promise I’ll always tell you everything,” Bruce murmurs.

“I can’t promise I like that idea.”

“Still think we can work?”

Gordon sighs. “We’ll try. Just like we always have.”

“Like always, then.”

 


End file.
